Is it still June? I think it is, which means more dinosaurs are on the way!

Been having a bit of trouble keeping to my schedule lately, but I’m still hopeful to finish out reviewing the Jurassic Franchise before the new movie comes out July 2nd. Already I’ve managed to watch The Lost World (Jurassic Park II) and Jurassic Park III so if all else fails at least there’s that.

Side note: With the release of the Walking With Dinosaurs reboot already this month, and new animated series Talon of which the first episode dropped on June 27th, it’s impossible to stay focused on any one thing right now. But also a great time to be a Dinosaur fan!

In any case, next up on the docket is 2015’s Jurassic World, the series reboot, and in my humble opinion, the sequel that is able to best recapture the sheer awe of dinosaurs present in the original film.

It’s not really apparent how all the loose dinosaurs were rounded up and put back behind fences prior to the start of the film, but it seems they were, and now (or in 2015), Hammond’s original dream is back and better than ever. Sleek beautiful ferries shuttle passengers to and from the island, and guests can venture out into the habitats themselves in canoes and hamster-ball-like ‘gyrospheres’ (narrated by Jimmy Fallon no less). Baby dinosaurs go in a petting zoo for the baby people, a giant swimming reptile (Mosasaurus) has its own ‘Sea World’ style show and everything just feels hunky-dory.

Even the Velociraptors — why on earth would you ever make more of those? — have a new military grade enclosure which seems almost overkill until one of the new handlers falls over a railing and is almost killed, proving our favorite deadly dinos are still as dangerous as ever despite some clicker-training and a fondness for Chris Pratt.

Of course we’re already seeing the flaws inherent in the system and spoiler alert, they’re the same flaws as the original park only amplified when the scientist stop using the source material (aka nature) and started making up their own dinosaurs from scratch (a lesson we’ve all learned against from season 6 and 7 of Game of Thrones lol).

Of course I’m talkin about the Indominus Rex, the movie’s primary villain.

It’s hard to describe this Dino in full without massive spoilers, but essentially this thing is tailor made for killing, and then all the characters (except Chris Pratt) have a surprised Pika-Chu face when it starts killing everything in sight. Containment won’t kill it on the spot because it’s such a huge financial loss but Indominus Rex does not report to a board of investors and will eat whatever it god well pleases.

And so . . . all hell breaks loose which is exactly what we came to see.

I’m not sure if I was just in an overly analytical mood during my most recent rewatch, but the plot holes in this one seemed to stick out a bit more than the other movies in the series. For instance, we are told several times throughout the movie how Indominus can sense infrared, yet when it is trying to hunt Chris Pratt, he pours gasoline on himself which ostensibly masks his smell and so the Indominus leaves him alone. But doesn’t it sense his heat signature?

Also, there’s a moment in the film when the two boys, Zach and Gray Mitchell, discover jeeps from the old park in a garage and manage to get them working. I’m not too worried about the believability of whether or not the jeeps would be able to run after 22 years of sitting idle, but I was struggling more to believe that they built a whole new park on the island and didn’t turn any of the old buildings into a museum or something? They just left them?

Discovering the jeeps is a bit of an Indiana Jones moment, in which we have a kind of brief feeling of maybe being an archaeologist ourselves, discovering a piece of history and getting nostalgic. It’s interesting how each film attempts to honor the legacy of the original movie in some way, and I think this scene is the main way the movie achieves that . . . I just wish it had been a little less forced.

Whatever the flaws, this movie has a lot of great moments too. The chemistry between Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard is excellent, and they seem to give viewers some of the romantic closure they never got between Grant and Sattler in the original films.

Plus we got to see many of our old favorite dinosaurs, and meet a few new faces. Which is really the best reason to watch these movies, for the awesome dinosaurs.

Anyway, I’m already a bit behind so I’m gonna keep this one short.

Give Jurassic World a watch?

Yup! Despite that it is more obvious in its oversights than previous iterations of the franchise, it is also (IMHO) the film that is best able to accomplish the awe and wonder of the original film’s premise, giving us cool new dinosaurs to look at, and a sleek new park for them to annihilate.

That’s all I have for this one! What did I miss (besides the insane fact that Claire manages to out run a Tyrannosaurus Rex in heels)? What new dino did you enjoy seeing the most? Which old favorite still slaps?

Leave your thoughts in the comments. Looking forward to talking about this one!